The present invention relates to computer-implemented systems and methods for storing and retrieving annotations. More particularly, the present invention relates to storing and retrieving annotations accessible by a plurality of reports.
Data maintained by many companies is often distributed across disparate systems. As a result, data that is provided to one business unit may not be accessible by another business unit. Even if data is stored in a consolidated manner, that data is not necessarily provided to all individuals who have access privileges to that data and who could benefit from that data.
Many reporting tools are available to companies today. Often, such reporting tools enable managers or other supervisory employees to add comments (i.e., “annotations”) to a report. For instance, a business manager may wish to provide reasons for a particular shipment delay. When the report is later accessed, those comments are viewed along with the data displayed in the report.
Unfortunately, once comments have been entered in association with one report, those comments generally cannot be accessed via another report being viewed. This is true even where the comments may be relevant to the report being viewed. One example in which this often occurs is with respect to variances. Two types of variances often provided in reports are budget variances and forecast variances. A budget variance is the variance between a budget amount and an actual amount, while a forecast variance is the variance between a forecast amount and a budget amount.
When a business manager or other individual monitors the spending and revenue of a particular company or unit within the company, they may enter comments explaining a variance such as a budget or forecast variance. For instance, the business manager may provide reasons for a particular budget variance. Unfortunately, even where these comments may be helpful to another business manager in another unit within the company that may be affected by the particular budget variance, these comments are typically only accessible via the report in which they were generated. In other words, another business manager viewing a report applicable to his or her group within the company will not be able to view the comments entered within another report that is also relevant to that same group within the company.
In view of the above, it would be beneficial if comments entered in association with one report could be viewed via other reports to which the comments are considered to be pertinent.